Letters: There’s a hole in green credentials of store bags

Come on, what’s all the fuss about a charge for plastic bags (News, June 29)? As we are told plastic carrier bags don’t decay naturally and so will survive for millions of years, surely at 5p each this will be the real deal, the bargain of the new millennium.

So let’s all buy a fiver’s worth to last us a lifetime. We can leave them to our children and all our descendants will benefit. After we hand over our £5 and go off smiling with 100 each, no more such bags will be needed and factories will stop making the damned things.

Simple? Is there a downside? Yes. The “holes for handles” seem to be prone to premature decay. Over to the carrier bag designers to save the planet.

John Addison, Roslin,

Midlothian

Regional tax would be low blow to Scots

LABOUR’S plans for regional benefits are a low blow for Scotland.

Ed Balls says under Labour Scots could get welfare benefits at a lower rate than people in parts of England. He said rates should be higher in London than in Scotland. This is an attack on universal benefits. We all pay the same tax, but Scots would pay the same yet get less. Is this what they mean by better together?

J Hill, Stenhouse Avenue, Edinburgh

These environmental demands are idiotic

Scotland’s electricity generating system only produces 0.03 per cent of the world’s emissions.

And here was me thinking that Alex Salmond’s ego-driven wind turbines were saving the planet.

Now an announcement from Ofgem says that there could be power cuts within two years.

Successive governments have for decades failed to secure future energy supplies and provide cheaper electricity for homes and industry.

The National Grid has called on companies to consider curbing their electricity use between 4pm and 8pm on winter workdays next year. A stark sign of the urgency of the UK’s imminent energy supply shortage.

The Green lobby have had a disproportionate influence with their “renewables” demands and deliberately ignored the fact that our existing power plants cannot possibly be replaced by wind turbines.

The Greens’ idiotic demands for renewables must be ignored as wind energy in Scotland can in no way counter global emissions.

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow

Mobile rings with call from ‘Project Fear’

Another day and yet another blatantly untrue scare story from those opposing Scottish independence.

According to the UK Government “Case for the Union”, on independence those travelling from Scotland into England and vice versa will incur international roaming charges if their mobile phone connects to a mast on the other side of the Border.

However, the European Commission is phasing out such charges for voice calls, texts and internet access, and has already cut them by 75 per cent since 2007.

Two weeks ago commissioners voted to end the charges completely as soon as July 2014 to help create a single European telecoms market.

It is patently obvious that those opposing independence will stoop to any level to try and discredit it and that no positive case will be made for Scotland to remain in the Union, simply scaremongering.

Under “Project Fear” it is only a matter of time before the claim is made by a UK Government department that on Scottish independence pestilence and famine will sweep the land, the sun will no longer shine and we will be cast into an abyss of perpetual darkness.

Alex Orr, Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh

Nationalists’ Europe policy is in disarray

Recent threats from the SNP government that an independent Scotland could block Spanish and Portuguese fishing vessels from gaining access to the North Sea disclose two clear facts.

Firstly, the only way Scotland could block foreign fishing vessels out of the North Sea would be if we were an accession state, waiting in line to join the EU, giving us full sovereignty over our waters.

This is a clear acknowledgement from the SNP government that despite all their previous denials, they do now accept this to be the true situation; Scotland will be an accession rather than a succession state, joining a queue of countries seeking EU membership, a process that can take several years.

Secondly, they have repeatedly assured us that our transition into full EU membership would be a smooth, trouble-free process and that with our oil, whisky and vast fishing resources we would be welcomed overnight as a new member state.

Now it appears they are contemplating the need to issue threats to other EU nations in a bid to blackmail them into giving Scotland whatever terms of entry it asks for.

The entire scenario once again highlights the SNP government’s state of total confusion and deliberate deception over their policy of “independence in Europe”.

Struan Stevenson MEP

Trike would do less damage than ponies

I WAS sorry to read about David Aris, who was turned away from the Davidson’s Mains Gala because of his invalid tricycle (Evening News, June 19).

I have heard there were children’s rides there, and also ponies. I am sure they would churn up the grass more. Also, the transport to bring these rides in would be much heavier than a small trike.